At the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia

Silke and Till visiting me at the IIT during spring break.

The "braccio di ferro" (the iron arm). With this robot manipulandum we perform our current experiments. The robot can create virtual force fields, as if you are touching an object that you cannot see. It allows us to examine haptic sensitivity. That is, how fine can humans sense differences in the shape of objects that they feel with their hands but do not see. Two weeks ago we began to examine the first patients with Parkinson's disease.